4 Unusual ways artist @ollyhowe leverages Instagram for business

Meet @ollyhowe - the artist who melts the line between beauty and business. While his artwork may be stunning in its own right, his innovative techniques for encouraging sales are ingenious, if a little unorthodox. If you’re tired of the same tips and tricks repackaged under a new headline, this might be the new spark of inspiration your Instagram account needs...

1. Increase mailing list sign ups

While social media platforms have a plethora of valuable tools for connecting with fans, mailing lists provide direct, longterm, reliable communication with your customer base. They cut through the noise and get your message straight into the inbox of people who actually care about your brand. This is why building a mailing list is an incredibly valuable marketing method to fuels sales.

With mailing lists, you aren’t at the mercy of social media platform changes. You don’t have to worry about algorithm updates, keep up to date with new features, navigate platform overhauls, dodge looming anxiety over getting cancelled or worry about declining organic reach. Therefore, it makes sense to leverage your social media presence to build a mailing list alongside it.

Some businesses point to their mailing list via a link-in-bio tool. Others save its promotion purely for their website. But @ollyhowe has a rare approach to provide a significant amount of incentive to sign up to his mailing list.

At risk of reaching fewer people with his products, @ollyhowe increases the value of being added to his mailing list by providing products, sales and extras that aren’t available anywhere else. The exclusivity of these products creates huge incentive to sign up. With this technique, mailing list members are primed for sales, making the quality of his list extremely high value for himself as well as his customers.

Once the viewer’s attention is grabbed by the striking product imagery, interested viewers venture into the description to see how they can get their hands on the products. It is here that they’ll discover these products are only available to mailing list subscribers. With a date and time for the product release, potential customers have a deadline to sign up. This sparks a sense of urgency alongside FOMO (fear of missing out) - fantastic tactics for encouraging action.

2. Limited runs

In the spirit of all things FOMO, another interesting technique utilised by @ollyhowe is the release of limited runs of products. This means there is only a set amount of a particular product ever made or there is a product that is only available to purchase within a certain set of dates. This is the perfect example of encouraging action from audience members through scarcity.

Check out the 2 examples above. On the left, there is a set time frame for purchasing the product. When 48 hours is over, no more will be available to buy. On the right, there are only 10 of this particular product available to buy - once they’re gone, they’re gone! These are 2 powerful techniques that trigger the same feeling of urgency within potential buyers.

It can be tempting to provide an unlimited stream of products to sell as many as possible, but sometimes this can have the opposite effect. Without any urgency, potential buyers may put off purchasing because they believe the product will always be available to them. Depending on your business type and customer base, testing out these tactics may drive more sales in a short amount of time.

3. Showcasing sold products

Probably the most unorthodox method I’ve noticed is that @ollyhowe shares posts of products that he has already sold. What’s interesting about this is that he’s not posting these in anticipation of getting more of the same product available, but merely to showcase work that has already been bought.

While this makes sense as an artist using Instagram as an ever-evolving portfolio, I feel this does so much more for this Instagram page than purely showcasing skill. As a viewer, seeing items you love but will never be able to purchase creates more incentive for buying currently available and upcoming pieces. It acts as a scarcity tactic, sparks FOMO and fuels a sense of urgency when new items become available. When coupled with the techniques we’re already covered, this makes for some compelling ways to open wallets.

4. DMs are open

A beautiful way @ollyhowe balances out his business brain with deeper audience connection is through the use of his message inbox. There are several posts where @ollyhowe encourages viewers to send him a direct message. Whether this is to grab a product or to be put on a guest list for an art show, this layer of direct one-to-one communication is a brilliant way to remind the audience that there is a person behind the products.

It’s easy to gloss over how much impact these posts can have on followers of this Instagram profile. The open invitation to be put on a guest list creates memories that go beyond a standard relationship with a brand. The communication opportunity to ‘message me if you’re interested’ is significantly more personable than clicking a button on a website or a product page. If your business is at a size that would benefit from more DMs and direct communication, this might be a way to strengthen your fan base and provide even more value.

With 4 new tactics to try out on your Instagram profile, make sure you’re tracking your progress with Minter.io - the social media analytics tool for business. Give it a go today!